PopeWatch: FRATELLI TUTTI Summarized and Translated from the Original BOMFOG

Inroduction

1. Title is a quote from Saint Francis.

2.Saint Francis gets the blame for inspiring the Pope to write this encyclical.

3.Pope misinterprets the encounter between Saint Francis and Sultan Malik-el-Kamil, leaving out that the Saint wanted to convert the Sultan.

4.Pope says that Saint Francis believes God is love, which misstates what the Saint believed about God.

5.The Pope is in favor of human fraternity.

6.Yep the Pope really loves fraternal love.

7.Pope uses covid-19 to push the solutions to human ills that he has been pushing throughout his pontificate.

8.Pope wants an emphasis on fraternity to have humanity consider itself to be members of one single human family.

Chapter One-Dark Clouds Over a Closed World

9.Pope wants to point out in this Chapter what hinders human fraternity.

10.Pope likes a post war trend he discerns to greater human integration.

11.Who is to blame for a slowing or reversal of this trend?  Nasty nationalists and populists!

12.Another villian is introduced:  Global capitalism.

13.Young are bone ignorant of history and too likely to celebrate individualism uber alles.

14.Pope attacks cultural colonization and words like freedom being emptied of meaning.

15.Decries modern politics which thrives on polarization.

16.Attacks politics which seek to treat people as enemies.

17.Attacks capitalism as silencing the voice of environmentalism.

18.Attacks treating other people as expendable like the unborn or the elderly.  Attacks wasting food.

19.A decline in the birthrate and a lack of care for the elderly are signs of selfishness.

20.Pope attacks racism and reducing labor costs.

21.Wealth has increased but so has inequality.

22.Pope condemns inequality as to weath.

23.Pope takes a knee to the feminazis.

24.Condemns modern day slavery, especially the criminal human trafficking trade.

25.Condemns war, racial persecution, religious persecution and terrorism as constituting a third world war.

26.We don’t trust each other because we lack “common horizons”.

27.Walls are bad.

28.Pope hates Mafias. (PopeWatch assumes the Mafia is opposed to many walls also.)

29.Development in advanced nations, although undeniable, does not lead to a more humane future.

30.All of humanity in same boat.  Decries global indifference.

31.Wants technological growth with more social inclusion.

32.Covid-19 momentarily created a sense of global community.

33.Bashes free markets.  Somehow ties this in with reaction to covid-19.

34.Pope does not call covid-19 divine retribution but says the world is crying out in rebellion.

35.Fears that humanity will lose the lesson of covid-19.  (For the Pope the lesson seems to be a firm embrace of socialism.)

36.Condemns consumerism and individualism.

37.Opposes opposition to admitting migrants or limiting foreign aid giveaways to feckless nations.

38.Posits a right not to emigrate, to remain in one’s homeland.

39.Condemns any opposition to migrants coming into a nation.

40.Europe can balance rights of citizens and welcoming migrants.

41.Condemns opposition to migrants as possibly racist.

43.Modern technology ending personal privacy.

44.Condemns digital campaigns of hatred and distrust of others.

45.Attacks fake news and destructive ideologies.  (Not so veiled swipe at Trump.)

46.Condemns destructive forms of fanaticism among religious believes.  Defamation and slander can become commonplace, even in Catholic media.  (Darn those blogs!)

47.True wisdom demands an encounter with reality.  Digital worlds can prevent such encounters.  (The Pope has a point here.)

48.We don’t listen to each other in the digital world, but simply argue.

49.A new lifestyle is emerging, where we create only what we want and exclude all that we cannot control or know instantly and superficially. (True.)

50.We need to have real conversations to understand each other.

51.Developing nations tend to ape more economically advanced nations and despising their own culture.

52.Pope goes full tin foil hat:  Destroying self-esteem is an easy way to dominate others. Behind these trends that tend to level our world, there flourish powerful interests that take advantage of such low self-esteem, while attempting, through the media and networks, to create a new culture in the service of the elite. 

53.Pope is against alienation, at least in developing countries.

54.Look on the sunny side of life.  Pope points to caregivers during the Black Sniffles.

55.Pope likes hope.

Chapter Two:  A Stranger on the Road

56.Parable of the Good Samaritan.

57.Am I my brother’s keeper?”

58.We are all connected with each other.

59.Love your neighbor embraces all of humanity.

60.Golden Rule.

61.Love your neighbor embraces all of humanity.

62.Love of neighbor is not restricted to the groups we belong to.

63.Good Samaritan showed compassion to a stranger.

64.Do you resemble the Good Samaritan or the people who declined to help?

65.Kitty Genovese syndrome.

66.We should emulate the Good Samaritan.

67.Ditto for society.

68.We should emulate the Good Samaritan. (The Pope tends to repeat himself.)

69.All of us have in ourselves something of the wounded man, something of the robber, something of the passers-by, and something of the Good Samaritan.

70.Divides the world between those who help others and those who do not.

71.Applies the story of the Good Samaritan to the world in general.

72.Pope doesn’t like robbers.

73.Condemns indifference to the plight of the poor.

74.Pope goes Saint James on religious people who pass by those in need.

75.Pope dons tin foil hat again:  Plunging people into despair closes a perfectly perverse circle: such is the agenda of the invisible dictatorship of hidden interests that have gained mastery over both resources and the possibility of thinking and expressing opinions.

76.Condemns indifference to the plight of the injured man.

77.We should all be Good Samaritans.

78.More of this theme.

79.More of this theme.

80.We should be neighbors to all.

81.We should be neighbors to all.

82.Samaritans were despised by the Jews.

83.Samaritan woman at the well.

84.No strangers for Christians.

85.Recognizing Christ in those at need.

86.Condemns narrow and violent nationalism.  (Yes Holiness, Argentina should really stop obsessing over Las Malvinas.)

Chapter Three:  Envisaging and Engendering an Open World

87.Human beings need to love others.

88.Love creates bonds.

89.Pope is really on his high horse about love being restricted to closed groups.

90.Points to monastic orders who help wandering strangers.

91.Without charity to others we possess only apparent virtues.

92.Bashes traditional religious believers:  Yet some believers think that it consists in the imposition of their own ideologies upon everyone else, or in a violent defence of the truth, or in impressive demonstrations of strength. All of us, as believers, need to recognize that love takes first place: love must never be put at risk, and the greatest danger lies in failing to love.

1. Love is movement towards others citing Saint Thomas Aquinas.

94.Love makes us wish for the best for others.

95.Love impels us to universal communion.

96.This applies between countries and regions.

97.Condemns racism and other forms of exclusion.

98.Names among groups excluded the disabled and the elderly.

99.A love capable of transcending borders.

100.Pope is not proposing an authoritarian and abstract universalism.  Does not want a globalism that crushes diversity.

101.Rehash of the Good Samaritan story.

102.Thinks that people would be less likely to behave like the Good Samaritan today because of our separation into groups. (Of course it was rare at the time of Christ which is why He thought up the parable.)

103.Pope wants education in fraternity.  (The Pope has infinite trust in the malleability of human beings.)

104.A conscious cultivation of fraternity is required.  (See?)

105.Radical individualism is a virus.  (The Pope has a genius for seeing phantom threats while resolutely ignoring real ones.)

106.“the mere fact that some people are born in places with fewer resources or less development does not justify the fact that they are living with less dignity”.  (Faith that Caesar can remedy the disparities is the implicit predicate of that statement.)

107.Every human being has the right to live with dignity and to develop integrally; this fundamental right cannot be denied by any country. 

108.What we need in fact are states and civil institutions that are present and active, that look beyond the free and efficient working of certain economic, political or ideological systems, and are primarily concerned with individuals and the common good.  (The Pope really, really hates free market states.)

109.If a society is governed primarily by the criteria of market freedom and efficiency, there is no place for such persons, and fraternity will remain just another vague ideal. (Of course what the Pope ignores is that the type of State he seems to desire will quickly produce a Nomenklatura which will make sure that their New Class enjoys the best and everyone else is reduced to a subsistence level.)

1. Indeed, “to claim economic freedom while real conditions bar many people from actual access to it, and while possibilities for employment continue to shrink, is to practise doublespeak”.[83] Words like freedom, democracy or fraternity prove meaningless, for the fact is that “only when our economic and social system no longer produces even a single victim, a single person cast aside, will we be able to celebrate the feast of universal fraternity”.  (Utopia courtesy of Caesar.  This time they will get it right.)

111. Unless the rights of each individual are harmoniously ordered to the greater good, those rights will end up being considered limitless and consequently will become a source of conflicts and violence”.  (Our Pope is going to save us from the dangers of individual rights.)

112. implies helping individuals and societies to mature in the moral values that foster integral human development.  (Caesar as preacher.)

113.Every society needs to ensure that values are passed on; otherwise, what is handed down are selfishness, violence, corruption in its various forms, indifference and, ultimately, a life closed to transcendence and entrenched in individual interests.  (The Pope of course ignores the manifest fact that it is exceedingly likely that modern states would wish to enforce values directly antithetical to Christianity.)

114.Solidarity as a moral value.  Families and teachers are important in transmitting values.

115.Service is never ideological, for we do not serve ideas, we serve people. (Sheer sophistry.)

116.Confronting the destructive impact of the empire of money.  (Vatican finances would be a good place to start Holiness.)

117.Care for our common planet.

118.Differences of colour, religion, talent, place of birth or residence, and so many others, cannot be used to justify the privileges of some over the rights of all. (Parts of this read as if written by a 20 year old Occupy Wallstreet minion from a few years ago.)

1. Saint John Chrysostom summarizes it in this way: “Not to share our wealth with the poor is to rob them and take away their livelihood. The riches we possess are not our own, but theirs as well”.  (Clerics when writing on economics usually demonstrate that they subsist on donations of people who work for a living, and don’t have the foggiest idea about how economies work.)

120.For my part, I would observe that “the Christian tradition has never recognized the right to private property as absolute or inviolable, and has stressed the social purpose of all forms of private property”.  (Theft as a Christian virtue.)

121.As it is unacceptable that some have fewer rights by virtue of being women, it is likewise unacceptable that the mere place of one’s birth or residence should result in his or her possessing fewer opportunities for a developed and dignified life.  (Send the bills to the Pope.)

122.More free enterprise bashing.

123.The right to private property is always accompanied by the primary and prior principle of the subordination of all private property to the universal destination of the earth’s goods, and thus the right of all to their use.  (Just in case we didn’t get the message the first few times he said it.)

124.Seen from the standpoint not only of the legitimacy of private property and the rights of its citizens, but also of the first principle of the common destination of goods, we can then say that each country also belongs to the foreigner, inasmuch as a territory’s goods must not be denied to a needy person coming from elsewhere.  (How convenient for nations like Argentina which have handled their financial affairs along Marxian lines: Karl and/or the Marx Brothers.)

125.If every human being possesses an inalienable dignity, if all people are my brothers and sisters, and if the world truly belongs to everyone, then it matters little whether my neighbour was born in my country or elsewhere.  (Your citizenship means nothing.  Paul of Tarsus, a citizen of the Empire, looks shocked.)

126.Bye, bye debt owed by foreign nations.

127.Certainly, all this calls for an alternative way of thinking. Without an attempt to enter into that way of thinking, what I am saying here will sound wildly unrealistic.  (Agreed Holy Father as to the wildly unrealistic part.)

Chapter Four:  A Heart Open to the Whole World

128.We must see things in a new light.

129.Pope calls, at least for the time being, for a right of unlimited immigration.

130.Welfare state for immigrants must be established, and their transportation to countries they wish to go to facilitated.

131.Full citizenship must be granted to these immigrants.

132.Global governance must be developed to facilitate all this.  (The Pope seems hell bent to living up to anti-Catholic stereotypes about the Church seeking to bring about a one world government.)

133.Migrants are a source of strength.

134.Blending of different cultures will prevent societal sclerosis.  (Thus sayeth the man who heads a state with perhaps the most restrictive naturalization laws of all.)

135.Latino culture can enrich the United States just as the Italians have enriched Argentina.  (PopeWatch will be laughing his hind end off if close to a majority of Hispanics next month vote for Trump.)

136.Muslim and Christian relations viewed through rose tinted glasses.

137.Mutual assistance between nations.

138.Global government in many spheres a must.

139.We should not welcome migrants simply because they can benefit us.

140.Calls for fraternal gratuitousness.

141. The true worth of the different countries of our world is measured by their ability to think not simply as a country but also as part of the larger human family. 

142.Calls for globalization and localization.

143.The common good likewise requires that we protect and love our native land. Otherwise, the consequences of a disaster in one country will end up affecting the entire planet. All this brings out the positive meaning of the right to property: I care for and cultivate something that I possess, in such a way that it can contribute to the good of all.

144.Universal does not necessarily mean bland, uniform and standardized, based on a single prevailing cultural model, for this will ultimately lead to the loss of a rich palette of shades and colours, and result in utter monotony.

145.Tensions between universalism and localism.

1. There is a kind of “local” narcissism unrelated to a healthy love of one’s own people and culture. It is born of a certain insecurity and fear of the other that leads to rejection and the desire to erect walls for self-defence.

147.Our local experience needs to develop “in contrast to” and “in harmony with” the experiences of others living in diverse cultural contexts.

148.A living culture, enriched by elements from other places, does not import a mere carbon copy of those new elements, but integrates them in its own unique way. The result is a new synthesis that is ultimately beneficial to all, since the original culture itself ends up being nourished.   (In parts of this the Pope sounds a bit like someone in favor of open borders because of all the great new foreign restaurants opening up as a result.)

149.The brotherhood of man.

150.no one people, culture or individual can achieve everything on its own.

151.Pope wants education to teach people to love their neighbor.

152.Pope would like the spirit of neighborhood in communities in some cities to apply to neighborhoods of nations.  (The Pope obviously is missing that neighborhoods in cities often sort like with like and are often highly suspicious of outsiders.)

153.Pope thinks that regional groups of nations could negotiate better terms of trade than nations going on their own seeking one on one agreements.   (Take that Brexit and Trump!)

154.We need a better type of politics to bring about the world the Pope would like.  (Notice the assumption of the Pope that his vision of a better world isn’t the problem but that the politics should change around the globe to fit his vision.)

Chapter Five:  A Better Kind of Politics

155.Attacks populism and liberalism.  (In this Pope’s world Leftism is apparently always benign and Islamic states are invisible.  He really is quite provincial in his truncated outlook on the complex globe.)

156.Pope really hates populism.

157.Pope distinguishes populism from people.  (The Pope seems to have a hard time conceding that what he wants might be broadly unpopular in the world of politics.)

158.People as a mythic category.  (Whenever the Pope deals with realities he finds disagreeable he tends to engage in verbal hand waving to get past what he dislikes.)

159.Pope tends to view populist leaders as being demagogues.  (Well, a Peronist should find this familiar.)

160.Pope engages in verbal hand waving to claim that populist groups do not represent the people.

161.Populist leaders look for short term advantage.  (A trait they share with 99 percent of almost all politicians.)

162.Since production systems may change, political systems must keep working to structure society in such a way that everyone has a chance to contribute his or her own talents and efforts. For “there is no poverty worse than that which takes away work and the dignity of work”.  (Thus sayeth the man who likely has never created a job in his life, unless some Vatican financial misadventures have done so for a few grifters.)

163.Neither the notion of “people” nor that of “neighbour” can be considered purely abstract or romantic, in such a way that social organization, science and civic institutions can be rejected or treated with contempt.

164.Paragraph ties together charity with welfare state.

165.This demonstrates the need for a greater spirit of fraternity, but also a more efficient worldwide organization to help resolve the problems plaguing the abandoned who are suffering and dying in poor countries. It also shows that there is no one solution, no single acceptable methodology, no economic recipe that can be applied indiscriminately to all. Even the most rigorous scientific studies can propose different courses of action.  (Pope Francis tends to be vague, but in this section of the Encyclical he is vaguer than usual.)

1. Otherwise, political propaganda, the media and the shapers of public opinion will continue to promote an individualistic and uncritical culture subservient to unregulated economic interests and societal institutions at the service of those who already enjoy too much power.  (The Pope will safeguard us from sinister Libertarians, ever eager to leave us alone, and from free markets.)

167.Criticizes liberalism, the Pope is speaking of 19th century free market liberalism, for thinking that an unregulated world would solve all problems.  (The Pope ever battles the strawmen he creates.)

168.The marketplace, by itself, cannot resolve every problem, however much we are asked to believe this dogma of neoliberal faith. Whatever the challenge, this impoverished and repetitive school of thought always offers the same recipes. Neoliberalism simply reproduces itself by resorting to the magic theories of “spillover” or “trickle” – without using the name – as the only solution to societal problems. There is little appreciation of the fact that the alleged “spillover” does not resolve the inequality that gives rise to new forms of violence threatening the fabric of society.  (A good summary of the thinking that turned a prosperous Argentina at the beginning of the last century into the perpetually teetering on the verge of bankruptcy unstable mess it is now.)

169.What is needed is a model of social, political and economic participation “that can include popular movements and invigorate local, national and international governing structures with that torrent of moral energy that springs from including the excluded in the building of a common destiny”, while also ensuring that “these experiences of solidarity which grow up from below, from the subsoil of the planet – can come together, be more coordinated, keep on meeting one another”. (Rather reminiscent of the Falange and their call for national syndicates of employers and employed.  Falangism has always played a role, sometimes stormy, in Peronism.)

170.Financial crisis of 2007-2008 did not lead to reforms but more of the same.  (Hard to argue with the Pope on that, although his solutions would be pure poison to any economy.)

1. I would also insist that “to give to each his own – to cite the classic definition of justice – means that no human individual or group can consider itself absolute, entitled to bypass the dignity and the rights of other individuals or their social groupings.

172.Better living through world government.

173.In this regard, I would also note the need for a reform of “the United Nations Organization, and likewise of economic institutions and international finance, so that the concept of the family of nations can acquire real teeth”  (Real teeth is revealing in a Freudian manner.  The Pope speaks much about love but he appears to be quite clear as to who he hates.)

174.Pope has undeserved faith in the fiction of International Law.

175.The Pope loves non governmental organizations.

176.Hooray for politics.

177.Politics must control economics. (Accompanied by the planting of money trees no doubt.)

178.Calls for statecraft which looks for the common good long term.

179.An economy that is an integral part of a political, social, cultural and popular programme directed to the common good could pave the way for “different possibilities which do not involve stifling human creativity and its ideals of progress, but rather directing that energy along new channels”.

180.Once more, I appeal for a renewed appreciation of politics as “a lofty vocation and one of the highest forms of charity, inasmuch as it seeks the common good”  (The Pope understands actual politics as well as he does actual economics.)

181.Charity is good.

182. Good politics will seek ways of building communities at every level of social life, in order to recalibrate and reorient globalization and thus avoid its disruptive effects.

183.Charity, with its impulse to universality, is capable of building a new world.

184.Charity’s openness to truth thus protects it from “a fideism that deprives it of its human and universal breadth”.

185.Concrete efforts must be made to bring about whatever they and their nations need for the sake of their development.

186.While one person can help another by providing something to eat, the politician creates a job for that other person, and thus practices a lofty form of charity that ennobles his or her political activity.  (Politicians creating jobs.  Pure Peronism.)

187.This charity, which is the spiritual heart of politics, is always a preferential love shown to those in greatest need; it undergirds everything we do on their behalf.

188.Politicians are doers, builders with ambitious goals, possessed of a broad, realistic and pragmatic gaze that looks beyond their own borders. Their biggest concern should not be about a drop in the polls, but about finding effective solutions to “the phenomenon of social and economic exclusion, with its baneful consequences: human trafficking, the marketing of human organs and tissues, the sexual exploitation of boys and girls, slave labour, including prostitution, the drug and weapons trade, terrorism and international organized crime. Such is the magnitude of these situations, and their toll in innocent lives, that we must avoid every temptation to fall into a declarationist nominalism that would assuage our consciences.  (Caesars as secular saviors.)

189.Eliminating global hunger as an essential goal.

190.It may seem naïve and utopian, yet we cannot renounce this lofty aim.  (Good summation by the Pope of the entire Encyclical.)

191.Pope Francis goes after “fundamentalists” again.

192.Spread an international culture of tolerance.

1. Yet it must never be forgotten that “loving the most insignificant of human beings as a brother, as if there were no one else in the world but him, cannot be considered a waste of time”.

194.Politics too must make room for a tender love of others. 

195.None of our acts of love will be lost.

196.Good politics combines love with hope and with confidence in the reserves of goodness present in human hearts. 

197.Viewed in this way, politics is something more noble than posturing, marketing and media spin. These sow nothing but division, conflict and a bleak cynicism incapable of mobilizing people to pursue a common goal. (Cicero:  ‘For he (Cato) gives his opinion as if he were in Plato’s Republic, not in Romulus’ cesspool.’)

Chapter Six-Dialogue and Friendship in Society.

198.Pope loves dialogue.

199.Yet “between selfish indifference and violent protest there is always another possible option: that of dialogue. Dialogue between generations; dialogue among our people, for we are that people; readiness to give and receive, while remaining open to the truth. 

200. Dialogue is often confused with something quite different: the feverish exchange of opinions on social networks, frequently based on media information that is not always reliable. These exchanges are merely parallel monologues.  (The Pope is not wrong about on line conversations often being parallel monologues.)

201.Pope is offended by the broad representation of views in the media.

202.We should strive to promote truthfulness.

203.Authentic social dialogue involves the ability to respect the other’s point of view and to admit that it may include legitimate convictions and concerns.

204.Need for greater interdisciplinary communication.

205.We need constantly to ensure that present-day forms of communication are in fact guiding us to generous encounter with others, to honest pursuit of the whole truth, to service, to closeness to the underprivileged and to the promotion of the common good. 

206.The solution is not relativism. Under the guise of tolerance, relativism ultimately leaves the interpretation of moral values to those in power, to be defined as they see fit.

207.A society is noble and decent not least for its support of the pursuit of truth and its adherence to the most basic of truths.

208. We need to learn how to unmask the various ways that the truth is manipulated, distorted and concealed in public and private discourse.

209.Yet, “when it is a matter of the moral norms prohibiting intrinsic evil, there are no privileges or exceptions for anyone. It makes no difference whether one is the master of the world or the ‘poorest of the poor’ on the face of the earth. Before the demands of morality we are all absolutely equal”.

210.What is now happening, and drawing us into a perverse and barren way of thinking, is the reduction of ethics and politics to physics. Good and evil no longer exist in themselves; there is only a calculus of benefits and burdens. 

211.Dialogue is the solution!  (Dialogue is the contemporary equivalent of asking the shaman to shake his magic sticks.)

212. There is no need, then, to oppose the interests of society, consensus and the reality of objective truth. These three realities can be harmonized whenever, through dialogue, people are unafraid to get to the heart of an issue.  (Human history, which consists of constant disagreements between groups, refutes this optimistic contention.)

213.For this reason, human beings have the same inviolable dignity in every age of history and no one can consider himself or herself authorized by particular situations to deny this conviction or to act against it.   (The history of the Church refutes this.  Presentism with a vengeance is the hallmark of the thought of Pope Francis.

214.To agnostics, this foundation could prove sufficient to confer a solid and stable universal validity on basic and non-negotiable ethical principles that could serve to prevent further catastrophes. As believers, we are convinced that human nature, as the source of ethical principles, was created by God, and that ultimately it is he who gives those principles their solid foundation.  (The occupants of the mass graves of the last century would be bleakly amused at the Pope’s optimism. The Pope has a complete inability to put himself into the intellectual shoes of someone who views the world differently from himself.)

215.“Life, for all its confrontations, is the art of encounter”.[204] I have frequently called for the growth of a culture of encounter capable of transcending our differences and divisions. This means working to create a many-faceted polyhedron whose different sides form a variegated unity, in which “the whole is greater than the part”.[205] The image of a polyhedron can represent a society where differences coexist, complementing, enriching and reciprocally illuminating one another, even amid disagreements and reservations.  (With all due respect to polyhedrons and other geometric forms, when peoples interact conflict is often likely to occur.  (The most peaceful interactions tend to be economic, involving the same market mechanisms that the Pope is opposed to.)

216.Pope wants a culture of encounter.

217.What is important is to create processes of encounter, processes that build a people that can accept differences. Let us arm our children with the weapons of dialogue! Let us teach them to fight the good fight of the culture of encounter!

 

1. All this calls for the ability to recognize other people’s right to be themselves and to be different.

219. It often happens that good ideas are not accepted by the poorer sectors of society because they are presented in a cultural garb that is not their own and with which they cannot identify. A realistic and inclusive social covenant must also be a “cultural covenant”, one that respects and acknowledges the different worldviews, cultures and lifestyles that coexist in society.

220.Indigenous peoples, for example, are not opposed to progress, yet theirs is a different notion of progress, often more humanistic than the modern culture of developed peoples. (The myth of the noble savage is a favorite myth of the Pope.)

1. Such a covenant also demands the realization that some things may have to be renounced for the common good.  (Beatings will continue until morale improves.  The lockdowns have given a great demonstration of the economic well being and civil rights governments are eager to dispense with for the “common good”.)

222.Consumerist individualism has led to great injustice.  (Like most Leftists the Pope has a false zero sum view of the world.  A family in Ghana has no cars because a family in Illinois has two.)

223.Saint Paul on kindness.

224.The value of kindness.

225.The world needs peacemakers.

226.A dedication to truth is an important part of making peace.

227.Truth and reconciliation.  (The Pope is obviously a fan of the current fad of truth and reconciliation committees.  PopeWatch views them as virtue signaling enterprises which “work” only where there is a power imbalance, as in South Africa, that would make resuming hostilities a suicidal proposition for one faction, almost always the faction whose alleged misdeeds are the subject of endless rehashing by the truth and reconciliation process, while the dominant faction is painted as angels.)

228.The path to peace does not mean making society blandly uniform, but getting people to work together, side-by-side, in pursuing goals that benefit everyone.

229.The Bishops of South Africa have pointed out that true reconciliation is achieved proactively, “by forming a new society, a society based on service to others, rather than the desire to dominate; a society based on sharing what one has with others, rather than the selfish scramble by each for as much wealth as possible; a society in which the value of being together as human beings is ultimately more important than any lesser group, whether it be family, nation, race or culture”. 

230.People must be made to feel at home in their own society.

231.Peace is the result of the work of everyone.

232.Ditto domestic peace.  The Pope writes against violent demonstrations.

233.The bumper sticker slogan “If you want peace work for justice.”  (That slogan always struck PopeWatch as akin to the protection racket.  Treat  me fairly, or I’ll loot your business seems like a poor basis for domestic harmony.)

234.Excusing bad behavior of the poor.

235.Work for Justice or never know Peace.  (Once again not very distinguishable from a Protection racket.  Of course it is very rarely the poor who produce successful revolutions.  Those are produced almost always by members of the wealthy and upper middle class. Disaffected intellectuals are also ever a potent recruiting ground for revolutionaries.  It is the poor of course who usually pay the most in the sheer human misery produced by most revolutions.  The fondness for cosplaying revolution by the scions of well to do families, while the neighborhoods of the poor are wrecked in riots, is nothing new.)

236.There are those who prefer not to talk of reconciliation, for they think that conflict, violence and breakdown are part of the normal functioning of a society.  (Always and ever true.)

237.Forgiveness and reconciliation are central themes in Christianity and, in various ways, in other religions. Yet there is a risk that an inadequate understanding and presentation of these profound convictions can lead to fatalism, apathy and injustice, or even intolerance and violence.

238. Jesus never promoted violence or intolerance.  (Jesus was so far beyond our human categories that attempts to place Him in our human cubbyholes are ever an exercise in futility.  His refusal to condemn the manifestly unjust Roman occupation of Judaea is merely one example of things that He said or did not say that mystified and/or enraged many of His contemporaries.  Once Jesus is taken out of the purely religious context of His God with Us mission, huge distortions of what He said and taught inevitably result.)

239.Description of early Christian communities.

240. Yet when we reflect upon forgiveness, peace and social harmony, we also encounter the jarring saying of Christ: “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to set a man against his father, and a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law; and a man’s foes will be members of his own household” (Mt 10:34-36). These words need to be understood in the context of the chapter in which they are found, where it is clear that Jesus is speaking of fidelity to our decision to follow him; we are not to be ashamed of that decision, even if it entails hardships of various sorts, and even our loved ones refuse to accept it. Christ’s words do not encourage us to seek conflict, but simply to endure it when it inevitably comes, lest deference to others, for the sake of supposed peace in our families or society, should detract from our own fidelity. Saint John Paul II observed that the Church “does not intend to condemn every possible form of social conflict. The Church is well aware that in the course of history conflicts of interest between different social groups inevitably arise, and that in the face of such conflicts Christians must often take a position, honestly and decisively”.  (The Church, wisely, has usually left purely secular political matters up to her sons and daughters.  Christian treatment of foes has usually been preached, with the Church often attempting to broker peace.  However, Christ was adamant that His Kingdom was not off this Earth and resisted any attempt to put His commands into a political straitjacket.)

241.Nor does this mean calling for forgiveness when it involves renouncing our own rights, confronting corrupt officials, criminals or those who would debase our dignity.  (True, and human history tells us that protests in such situations are usually useless unless they are backed up with, at least, the threat of armed force.)

242.The important thing is not to fuel anger, which is unhealthy for our own soul and the soul of our people, or to become obsessed with taking revenge and destroying the other.  (True, although justice may require stern measures.  At the defense of the Alcazar in Toledo at the onset of the Spanish Civil War, one of the Nationalist defenders would say after firing his rifle, “Kill without hate!”.  Wise advice, and hard for most of us mortals to follow in times of war.)

243.Each of us should realize that “even the harsh judgment I hold in my heart against my brother or my sister, the open wound that was never cured, the offense that was never forgiven, the rancour that is only going to hurt me, are all instances of a struggle that I carry within me, a little flame deep in my heart that needs to be extinguished before it turns into a great blaze”.  (All that hate is going to burn you up kid. Colonel Andrew Tanner, Screenplay, Red Dawn.)

244.Authentic reconciliation does not flee from conflict, but is achieved in conflict, resolving it through dialogue and open, honest and patient negotiation. (Sometimes yes, and sometimes no.)

245.Unity is greater than conflict. (A very debatable proposition.)

246.Of those who have endured much unjust and cruel suffering, a sort of “social forgiveness” must not be demanded. (Actually not a bad policy, but one hard to carry out, especially if certain groups are educated to cherish grievances and find them every place, as is the case currently in the US.)

1. The Shoah must not be forgotten. (The spread of anti-semitism on much of the Left already indicates that it has been.)

2. Nor must we forget the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. (The Pope is so essentially a Leftist tool.  Juxtaposing those sadly necessary military actions with the Holocaust is beneath contempt.)

249.Nowadays, it is easy to be tempted to turn the page, to say that all these things happened long ago and we should look to the future. For God’s sake, no! We can never move forward without remembering the past; we do not progress without an honest and unclouded memory.  We need to “keep alive the flame of collective conscience, bearing witness to succeeding generations to the horror of what happened”, because that witness “awakens and preserves the memory of the victims, so that the conscience of humanity may rise up in the face of every desire for dominance and destruction”. The victims themselves – individuals, social groups or nations – need to do so, lest they succumb to the mindset that leads to justifying reprisals and every kind of violence in the name of the great evil endured.   (Cherishing grievances.  The Pope is ever able to contradict himself within a few sentences.)

250.Forgive but do not forget.

251.Those who truly forgive do not forget. Instead, they choose not to yield to the same destructive force that caused them so much suffering.

252.Forgiveness is precisely what enables us to pursue justice without falling into a spiral of revenge or the injustice of forgetting.

253.Violence perpetrated by the state, using its structures and power, is not on the same level as that perpetrated by particular groups.  (Once again a proposition that is either true or false depending upon the facts of a situation.  The Pope is ever at war with nuance and facts.)

1. I ask God “to prepare our hearts to encounter our brothers and sisters, so that we may overcome our differences rooted in political thinking, language, culture and religion. Let us ask him to anoint our whole being with the balm of his mercy, which heals the injuries caused by mistakes, misunderstandings and disputes. And let us ask him for the grace to send us forth, in humility and meekness, along the demanding but enriching path of seeking peace”.

255.War and the Death Penalty.

256.There are those who seek solutions in war.  (Rather all of human history teaches that war is part of the human condition.)

257.United Nations as a solution to war.  (Read in the right spirit our Pope is quite the comedian.)

258.Bye, bye Just War Teaching.

259.In today’s world, there are no longer just isolated outbreaks of war in one country or another; instead, we are experiencing a “world war fought piecemeal”, since the destinies of countries are so closely interconnected on the global scene. (As is the case with so many things the Pope says, this simply isn’t true.  One of the features of the post war world is a success in usually isolating wars to prevent regional conflagrations.)

260. In the words of Saint John XXIII, “it no longer makes sense to maintain that war is a fit instrument with which to repair the violation of justice”.

1. Every war leaves our world worse than it was before. (Manifestly untrue.  Some wars leave the world a better place.  Popes should not lie in Encyclicals or other official teaching texts.)

262.With the money spent on weapons and other military expenditures, let us establish a global fund[245] that can finally put an end to hunger and favour development in the most impoverished countries, so that their citizens will not resort to violent or illusory solutions, or have to leave their countries in order to seek a more dignified life.  (Poverty almost never plays a role in wars between nations.  Even revolutions within nations tend to occur during times of rising prosperity.  Not only does the Pope not have a solution to the problem of war, he does not understand the true nature of the problem of war:  conflicts between peoples and groups, often intractable in nature, and sometimes where there is some justice on both sides.)

263.Abolish the death penalty.

264.In the New Testament, while individuals are asked not to take justice into their own hands (cf. Rom 12:17.19), there is also a recognition of the need for authorities to impose penalties on evildoers (cf. Rom 13:4; 1 Pet 2:14).   (The Pope does not mention that the Old Testament has endless death penalties for crimes and that the New Testament utters not a word against the death penalty.)

265.Pope argues that some people in the history of the Church were against the death penalty.  (He does not state that for the first 1950 years of the history of the Church the clear teaching of the Church was that the death penalty was licit, and that clerics, including the Pope, frequently ordered the death penalty.)

266.Fear and resentment can easily lead to viewing punishment in a vindictive and even cruel way, rather than as part of a process of healing and reintegration into society.  (Popewatch  knows of a case where a fellow murdered his girlfriend, his daughter, 5, and his son, 3.  How would the Pope reintegrate him into society?)

267.Pope gives an indirect nod to Black Lives Matter.

268.Argues against the death penalty and life imprisonment, which the Pope calls a secret death penalty.  (Campaigners against the death penalty used to argue that life imprisonment was sufficient.  Few political movements have been more unremittingly mendacious than the anti-death penalty movement.)

269.A murderer retains his personal dignity.

270.Attempts to enlist Christ in his anti-death penalty campaign.

271.The different religions, based on their respect for each human person as a creature called to be a child of God, contribute significantly to building fraternity and defending justice in society.

272.God the Father is necessary for fraternity.

273.Quotes John Paul II:  If there is no transcendent truth, in obedience to which man achieves his full identity, then there is no sure principle for guaranteeing just relations between people. Their self-interest as a class, group or nation would inevitably set them in opposition to one another. If one does not acknowledge transcendent truth, then the force of power takes over, and each person tends to make full use of the means at his disposal in order to impose his own interests or his own opinion, with no regard for the rights of others… The root of modern totalitarianism is to be found in the denial of the transcendent dignity of the human person who, as the visible image of the invisible God, is therefore by his very nature the subject of rights that no one may violate – no individual, group, class, nation or state. Not even the majority of the social body may violate these rights, by going against the minority.

274.From our faith experience and from the wisdom accumulated over centuries, but also from lessons learned from our many weaknesses and failures, we, the believers of the different religions, know that our witness to God benefits our societies.

275.It should be acknowledged that “among the most important causes of the crises of the modern world are a desensitized human conscience, a distancing from religious values and the prevailing individualism accompanied by materialistic philosophies that deify the human person and introduce worldly and material values in place of supreme and transcendental principles”.

276.For these reasons, the Church, while respecting the autonomy of political life, does not restrict her mission to the private sphere. On the contrary, “she cannot and must not remain on the sidelines” in the building of a better world, or fail to “reawaken the spiritual energy” that can contribute to the betterment of society. (The apologia of our ever political Pope.)

277.The Church esteems the ways in which God works in other religions, and “rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions. She has a high regard for their manner of life and conduct, their precepts and doctrines which… often reflect a ray of that truth which enlightens all men and women”.[271] Yet we Christians are very much aware that “if the music of the Gospel ceases to resonate in our very being, we will lose the joy born of compassion, the tender love born of trust, the capacity for reconciliation that has its source in our knowledge that we have been forgiven and sent forth. If the music of the Gospel ceases to sound in our homes, our public squares, our workplaces, our political and financial life, then we will no longer hear the strains that challenge us to defend the dignity of every man and woman”.[272] Others drink from other sources. For us the wellspring of human dignity and fraternity is in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. From it, there arises, “for Christian thought and for the action of the Church, the primacy given to relationship, to the encounter with the sacred mystery of the other, to universal communion with the entire human family, as a vocation of all”.[273  (What remains of the command of Christ:  Go ye and make ye disciples of all the nations?  Not a whole lot.)

278.For many Christians, this journey of fraternity also has a Mother, whose name is Mary. Having received this universal motherhood at the foot of the cross (cf. Jn 19:26), she cares not only for Jesus but also for “the rest of her children” (cf. Rev 12:17). In the power of the risen Lord, she wants to give birth to a new world, where all of us are brothers and sisters, where there is room for all those whom our societies discard, where justice and peace are resplendent.

279.We Christians ask that, in those countries where we are a minority, we be guaranteed freedom, even as we ourselves promote that freedom for non-Christians in places where they are a minority.   (As the Pope looks with complete indifference at the persecution of Chinese Catholics, indeed he cooperates with their persecutors.)

280.At the same time, we ask God to strengthen unity within the Church, a unity enriched by differences reconciled by the working of the Spirit. (The Holy Spirit can of course redeem all human folly, but we have no guarantee as to the souls lost by human folly within the leadership of the Church.)

281.The Pope quotes himself:  “God does not see with his eyes, God sees with his heart. And God’s love is the same for everyone, regardless of religion. Even if they are atheists, his love is the same. When the last day comes, and there is sufficient light to see things as they really are, we are going to find ourselves quite surprised”.  (Pity that there are plenty of quotes of Christ stating otherwise.)

282.The truth is that violence has no basis in our fundamental religious convictions, but only in their distortion.  (In the world to come Pope Urban II and Pope Francis will no doubt have a very interesting chat.)

283.Condemns terrorism.

284.Wails on “fundamentalists” again.

285.Quotes from his meeting with Grand Imam Ahmad Al-Tayyeb.

286.In these pages of reflection on universal fraternity, I felt inspired particularly by Saint Francis of Assisi, but also by others of our brothers and sisters who are not Catholics: Martin Luther King, Desmond Tutu, Mahatma Gandhi and many more. Yet I would like to conclude by mentioning another person of deep faith who, drawing upon his intense experience of God, made a journey of transformation towards feeling a brother to all. I am speaking of Blessed Charles de Foucauld.

287.Prayers.